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Former Dodger outfielder Tony Gwynn Jr. has joined the Dodger Talk team for AM 570 LA Sports Radio.

In addition, Tim Cates will host the Dodgers pregame show for the first time, incorporating reports from Rick Monday and David Vassegh leading up to the game.

Vassegh is returning for his fifth season to the Dodger Talk postgame show, where he will be joined by Gwynn with contributions from Monday, Charley Steiner, Alanna Rizzo and Ned Colletti.

Dodger Talk can be heard each night from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. during Spring Training and, beginning March 31 with the Freeway Series against the Angels, following every game through the 2016 season.

Known as a top defensive outfielder, Gwynn had a .309 on-base percentage and 80 steals in 106 attempts across his 685-game big-league career from 2006-14. That includes 239 games with the Dodgers in 2011-12, when he had 10 triples and 35 steals. Gwynn tied or led the Dodgers in triples both years.

A UCLA graduate, Cates has worked in sports talk radio for almost 20 years, covering the NBA Finals, World Series, Super Bowl and NCAA Final Fours, and serving as a producer, reporter and host on Fox Sports Radio Network and AM 570 LA Sports. Most recently, Cates has hosted UCLA football and basketball pregame and postgame shows, and can also be heard as the studio host for Compass Media Networks coverage of the Oakland Raiders and NCAA football and basketball.

Looks like Louis Mattingly was told he’s not starting … but Mom and Dad don’t seem discouraged about his long-term potential.

Here are some more notes and news …

Don Mattingly told reporters today that reliever Mike Adams is days away from being “game ready,” but he looks good so far.

“Dodgers right-hander Zack Greinke looked sharp Friday,” writes AJ Cassavell of MLB.com, “facing hitters for the first time this spring. Perhaps more importantly, he came away from his live batting practice session pain free.”

Ned Colletti shared his thoughts with Bill Dwyre of the Times about his new role with the Dodgers — paraphrasing Jim Murray in the process. “I think he wrote one time,” Colletti said, “that things can get like riding a tiger. We’re afraid to get on, and once we’re on, we’re afraid to get off.”

Of the four players since 1970 who have played at least 300 games at both shortstop and the outfield, two have played for the Dodgers: Derrel Thomas and Hubie Brooks. Hanley Ramirez could become the third, as Doug Miller of ESPN Insider notes.

Despite this afternoon’s rain, the 2015 Pitching in the Community Caravan, presented by Bank of America, got off to a happy start today with a baseball skills clinic featuring Dodger first baseman Adrian Gonzalez at Garfield High School.

Looking back at the 2014 season, here are five memorable moments from life at the ballpark.

Zeke Wrigley

Entering the 2014 season, it appeared the Dodger franchise had 9,972 victories since joining the National League in 1890, which meant planning for a 10,000th victory in late May. When public relations manager Jon Chapper called the Elias Sports Bureau in mid-April to double-check the numbers, he was told the team actually had 13 more victories to its all-time ledger.

The discrepancy centered on the 1899 season – MLB credited Brooklyn’s record at 101-47 while the team had listed an 88-42 record in media guides dating back to the 1930s. Steve Brener, the former Dodgers’ public relations director from 1975-87 who returned to the ballpark in 2012 as a public relations consultant, was the target of good-natured ribbing by Generation X members, who accused the media maven of making a mistake 114 years ago with his bookkeeping.

Also on Tuesday, Tommy Lasorda, Ned Colletti and Tim and Lori Wallach helped serve Thanksgiving meals to approximately 300 service members at the 9th annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the Troops at the Bob Hope USO, located at Los Angeles International Airport. The event was part of the Dodgers’ 2014 Season of Giving.

And on his last off day before returning home from the Japan All-Star Series, Drew Butera joined Jeff Beliveau of the Rays in visiting a children’s hospital. David Venn has more at MLB.com.

Clayton Kershaw and Ned Colletti congratulate each other after the Dodgers clinch the NL West on September 24. (Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)

Former AMPAS president Tom Sherak

By Jon Weisman

Ned Colletti and Stan Kasten met with reporters at Dodger Stadium today to talk about Colletti’s transition from general manager to special assistant to Kasten. Ken Gurnick is covering it all for MLB.com, but there was a story that Colletti told near the end of the session that I wanted to share.

Colletti remembered his good friend, Tom Sherak, the former entertainment executive and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, who passed away in January after a long battle with prostate cancer.

“When he left the Academy, he wanted to work for the Dodgers,” Colletti said. “Grew up in Brooklyn. So I hired him for a dollar a year, special assistant to the GM. He used to always tell me, no matter how bad his day was going — and this man was in a lot of pain for a lot of years — that everything was going to be OK. And he’s said, ‘I’ve had this marvelous life, coming out of Brooklyn. coming out of not much, worked for Paramount for years, Fox for years, the Academy. I’ve got this protective bubble around me, so you can call me “The Bubble Man.”‘

Andrew Friedman, the 37-year-old architect of four playoff appearances and a trip to the World Series for the Tampa Bay Rays, is joining the Dodgers in the newly created position of president of baseball operations.

Ned Colletti, the Dodgers’ general manager since 2005, will remain in the organization as a senior advisor to president and CEO Stan Kasten. A news conference will be held at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

Friedman is six years older than Paul DePodesta was when the latter was named general manager in February 2004. And it’s those six years, plus three more as Rays executive vice president of baseball operations, that probably will impress those who would otherwise doubt someone so young and who came to baseball after starting his working career with Bear Stearns and MidMark Capital.

Though they finished 77-85 in 2014, the Rays had a run of six consecutive winning seasons — five of them with at least 90 victories — despite operating with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. At age 31, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Sporting News’ Executive of the Year award.

“Andrew Friedman is one of the youngest and brightest minds in the game today and we are very fortunate to have him join our organization,” said Kasten. “The success he has had over the past nine years in molding the Tampa Bay Rays team has been incredible.”

Lest you think Friedman was a baseball neophyte when he joined the Rays, he went to Tulane on a baseball scholarship as an outfielder.

Since Colletti joined the Dodgers, the team has had eight winning seasons and five playoff appearances in nine years.

“Ned Colletti has played a major role in the success of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the last nine years, and I’m thrilled that we are able to retain him as a special advisor to me,” said Kasten. “Ned’s knowledge and experience in the game covering 33 years will be a great asset to the club as we continue to add and build our player development system.”

A significant building block to the construction of the 2013 and 2014 National League West champion Dodgers can be traced back to the 2008 First-Year Player Draft.

Interestingly, only one player who was selected that year by the Dodgers has made an impact on both division championship teams by playing in games for the Dodgers — Dee Gordon. However, the success of a draft isn’t always measured by how many guys make an impact with the team they were drafted by, but how a team utilizes those pieces.

“The one thing we’ve done a really good job of is we still manage to do a really good job of keeping our key players — like out of that draft we kept Dee Gordon,” said Dodger vice president of amateur scouting Logan White. “I look at it like this — for Ned (Colletti) to have the ammo of having players to be able to utilize in trades is huge. You can take on money, but teams still need to get a player or get something in return.”

For the first five innings, the Dodgers were being no-hit. Before the next two innings were over, Oliver Perez was throwing at Andre Ethier (one might have concluded) because the Dodgers were hitting too many home runs.

There were three homers in all, two of them three-run blasts in back-to-back innings by Adrian Gonzalez, who became the first Dodger since Eric Karros in 1993 to hit two trifecta round-trippers. (Cody Ross, a Dodger opponent today, had a three-run home run and a grand slam for Los Angeles in 2006, in his final start with the team).

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Fortunes change, don’t ya know? It’s all about piling up more good than bad. And that is what the Dodgers have done in 2014.

Saturday, I interviewed Dodger general manager Ned Colletti for the print edition of Dodger Insider, and I asked him if there had been a defining moment for the 2014 Dodgers. He didn’t immediately see one, acknowledging at least so far that this year, the team was more methodical than dramatic. That lack of drama has come to be considered a strike against the Dodgers, as if the pennant race were a beauty contest rather than a measurement of which team has the most victories at the end of season.

Today, the Dodgers moved 19 games about .500, tied with Washington for the best in the National League.

But those insisting on an observable spark certainly have to like what they saw from the Dodgers this afternoon, when, after waiting until the sixth inning to gather kindling, they lit a fire. Dee Gordon broke up Trevor Cahill’s no-hitter with a one-out double, Hanley Ramirez walked, and Gonzalez absolutely smashed a ball over the fence in to dead center.

Though this won’t qualify as a late-inning clutch hit, it was a huge one, and comes a day after Gordon’s tiebreaking RBI single in the bottom of the eighth Saturday. Yes, Virginia, this team does come through.

An inning later, it was the same trio. Perez walked Gordon, then Ramirez reached base on an error by shortstop Cliff Pennington. Gonzalez hit his third home run of the past 21 hours and second homer of the year off a lefty, giving him his seventh 100-RBI season of his career and matching his 2013 total as a Dodger. And then for good measure, Matt Kemp hit his 19th of the year. (This article seems timely.)

Perez then smacked Ethier in the back (making him the Dodgers’ all-time leader in HBPs with 53), and when umpire Laz Diaz warned both benches, that didn’t sit well with Don Mattingly and Monday’s starting pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, both of whom were ejected. Thankfully, Kershaw isn’t pitching against Arizona again this year, which saves us the worry about him retaliating and getting thrown out himself.

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Since August 29, San Francisco has won six of its past eight games. If the Giants don’t win tonight in Detroit, they’ll have gained no ground on the Dodgers in that stretch.

Just to show how unprecedented it would be for Alex Guerrero to step into the Dodger starting lineup at the beginning of the 2014 campaign, consider this:

In the eight previous seasons of the Ned Colletti era, no position player without previous MLB experience has been the Dodgers’ intended starter in March or April.

Since Colletti arrived, only three Dodgers have started more than 10 games before April 30 without previously playing in the Majors, and none was the first resort:

Blake DeWitt and James Loney in action at Game 1 of the 2008 National League Championship Series in Chicago. (Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)

James Loney, 2006: Loney made his debut on April 4 and started 10 games in a platoon with Olmedo Saenz while the Dodgers waited for Nomar Garciaparra to recover from a strained ribcage muscle suffered in the Freeway Series. Loney, who OPSed .595 in 44 plate appearances during this first taste of the Show, went to Triple-A once Garciaparra was activated April 22.

Blake DeWitt, 2008: DeWitt had but 45 games of experience above Single-A when he was thrust into the role of starter at third base, thanks to injuries not only to Garciaparra (wrist microfracture) but also Andy LaRoche (torn ulnar collateral ligament in right thumb) — both suffered in the same March 7 Spring Training game — as well as Tony Abreu. Nicknamed “The Solution,” DeWitt played regularly at third base with an OPS above .800 as he passed the 200-plate appearance mark in mid-June, before he slumped and was ultimately replaced by midseason acquisition Casey Blake. DeWitt remains the only Colletti-era Dodger to start the most games of anyone at his position in a given year (77) without having previously earned an MLB paycheck.

Jerry Sands, 2011: Sands slugged .529 for Double-A Chattanooga in 2010, but still began 2011 in the minors as predicted. He was called up April 18 to fill the roster spot of Xavier Paul, who was designated for assignment, and play some left field in a year the Dodgers began with Tony Gwynn Jr., Marcus Thames and Paul (with a sprinkle of Jamie Hoffmann). Sands played somewhat regularly into early June and ended up starting 53 games for Los Angeles in left field, right field and at first base.

Bringing up players in May has been a different story: Russell Martin, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp are notable examples. But handing a position to a pure rookie before May Day just hasn’t been happening. Even Yasiel Puig, of course, waited until June last year.

While Guerrero isn’t a typical rookie, it would still be groundbreaking for him to serve as a regular for the Dodgers in March and April.

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